Talk:Valkyries Sisterhood/@comment-176.58.21.130-20190215010546/@comment-45075715-20200219112816
I second the question about actually testing them in battle. The Valkyrie are one of the easiest KO units to obliterate with in my experience with simple F1-F3 timed well from proper starting position against the widest range of enemy troops in an open battlefield. If I want a no-brainer KO, I go with valkyrie or Shadow Legion. They're one of my favorite no-brainer KO knights now besides Clarion Call (but only with enhanced AI -- I didn't find CC nearly as good in older versions) and Shadow Legion. Also they do surprisingly well even with the short-reach Dragonspine Axe in counterintuitive ways against both other cav and foot soldiers even when used from mounts. I haven't observed up close so often with the Dragonspine to see how well they do with it, but only that the ones equipped with it aren't suffering much as far as their kill speed and even when closing in and avoiding their throwing weapons (it is possible that even if they are inferior with that short reach from a mount, the ones that spawn with it have a huge advantage when unhorsed after being surrounded to take out the nearby units on foot with the axe over the ones that spawn with longer swords). The AI tends to do a counter-intuitively better job with faster but shorter reach weapons than one might expect in ways that I really experienced firsthand in this mod for the first time by experimenting endlessly with CKO equipment. I really didn't realize how much weapon speed is helpful to the AI in the engine until I got to really mess around endlessly with CKO gear in this mod. It really changed my whole perspective on the engine since I used to naively think that what I can use best in my hands as a human player will translate almost equally as well to the AI, but the AI is a whole different beast and benefits more from fast attacks since it's not so smart about making careful and well-timed attacks from the perfect range for the weapon, so it tends to do better going berserk and attacking and feinting super fast like it's on drugs even if it has to sacrifice a good chunk of reach and damage to get that super fast attack speed (for melee -- ranged is a different story with limited ammo but with unlimited ammo, weapon speed would still tend to dominate as well over accuracy and missile speed like bows over x-bows during siege defense). I also have this conjecture and admittedly it's pure conjecture to try to explain what I'm seeing with the fastest kill rates on shorter-reach and lower DPS weapons when comparing all sorts of melee weapons on my CKOs (short, fast, long, slow, various combinations), but the engine is such that to get the most damage from a swing or thrust, you have to time it really carefully and do it from an optimal distance. With a shorter-reach and/or faster weapon, the AI might more often get the hit to strike in that optimal mid-frame of animation and mid-arc of a swing or extension of the arm (towards fully extended, but too extended and not retracting) for a thrust without severe damage penalties as opposed to hitting with the tip or close to the hilt with the swing of a longer weapon and/or during the earliest or latest stage of the attack animation. At least that would explain why I'm seeing way faster kill rates on AI equipped with shorter and lower-damage weapons even from mounts. I even think they might do a better job with the leaf sword, even if they hypothetically couldn't use board, over the two-handed berserker sword as far as racking up kills the fastest (and even against armored units very counter-intuitively). Weapon speed beats weapon reach in the hands of the AI in all my tests if one has to compromise a good chunk of reach for a boost in speed (maybe not to the level of a dagger, but within reason like 60+ reach). I'd be willing to bet that if a hypothetical short sword existed with half the reach and damage (provided the damage isn't so low that it's rendered mostly ineffective against armor) but twice the speed of a hypothetical longsword with half the speed but twice the reach/damage, the AI would excel more in a wider variety of scenarios with that short sword even when mounted. Again all my tests suggest this provided the faster but shorter and lower-damage weapon isn't so low when combined with power strike level in damage/type that it doesn't bounce off thick armor and can still very briefly stun the enemy with a swing or thrust instead of bouncing off the armor and stunning the attacker.